Franco-Spanish War

The Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659) was a military conflict between the Kingdom of France and Habsburg Spain that began as a theater of the Thirty Years' War. France and Spain had been rivals since the Italian Wars of the 16th century, and France found itself surrounded by Habsburg territories after King Charles I of Spain became Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. During the Thirty Years' War, France's First Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, funded Sweden and its efforts to fight against the Habsburgs, and France decided to enter the war in 1635 after the Habsburgs defeated the Swedes at the First Battle of Nordlingen and forced many Protestant states to surrender. The French, despite being Catholics, took up arms against the Habsburgs with the goal of ending the Habsburg encirclement of their country. The French won the Battle of Les Avins in Belgium on 20 May 1635, an early success, but the Spanish defeated a joint Franco-Dutch invasion of the Spanish Netherlands before Spanish and Imperial armies cut through Picardy, Burgundy, and Champagne. However, the Spanish offensive stalled before Paris could be targeted, and the French launched counterattacks that drove the Spanish back into Flanders. By 1640, Spain was facing rebellions in Portugal and Catalonia, and the French allied with the Catalonian rebels. In 1643, a powerful Spanish army was defeated by the French at the Battle of Rocroi, and another Spanish army was defeated at the Battle of Lens in 1648. That same year, with the end of the broader Thirty Years' War, several French nobles rebelled against Cardinal Richelieu in the "Fronde" rebellion, with the minor nobles fighting the royal family. The rebellion was crushed by 1653, but the Spanish used the distraction to reconquer Catalonia. In 1657, the English Commonwealth declared war on Spain and formed an alliance with France, and the English conquered Jamaica in the Caribbean and assisted France with a siege of the port city of Dunkirk. The Spanish tried to break the siege, but this led to the Battle of the Dunes on 14 June 1658, and the Spanish were decisively defeated. In 1659, Spain and France agreed to a final peace treaty; France gained southern Flanders and parts of southern France from Spain, and England gained Dunkirk, which was sold to France in 1662.